“Look at me ,” said Amalia. “I’m like a human. Better. You’re happy to be with me like this, aren’t you? ”
“Yes,” Nick assured her.
Wolves couldn’t tell when you lied to them. People rarely could either.
Nick never tried again, with a mortal. They could take their brightness and warmth away so easily and leave you out in the cold. Amalia was right about them.
Now Nick was in hell, listening as the song drifted down from the tower top. “Tho’ the heart be weary, sad the day and long …” There was a hollow echoing place under his ribs, cold as an empty cave. Heartsick. Homesick. He’d felt this way his whole life.
He could follow the melody of radiant mortal sweetness up the stairs.
The door in the tower was a cage door.
“Come on ,” Nick told Satan and the flickering shadows. “I learned better than this long ago.”
Mortals weren’t for him.
Across icy fields in hell, through trees that sprang from the earth like mushrooms, Nick glimpsed a building that hadn’t been there before. A darker gray than snow in shadows, solid and reassuring. Built to look like a mortal tomb, with a flight of stone steps where witches could pass back and forth, and a broad stone banister where Nick sat outside in the sun and read. Invisible Academy , the mortal called it, because he was dumb.
Nick always remembered the first time he saw his school. He’d been in the mountains with the wolves, days before his dark baptism. Amalia roamed far afield, and Nick saw his chance. He didn’t hatch any plan. He only realized, with a shock, how long she’d been gone. His head jerked up, and he thought: I cannot live like this for a moment longer .
He ran. Amalia caught him. She tried to drag him back, but he fought. It felt like his last chance. She snarled and hurt him, werewolf red in tooth and claw. For a blurred, desperate moment Nick was sure she’d kill him. His mind seized on a spell he’d read years ago, sitting by his mother.
With a mouth full of blood and trembling hands, Nick teleported away.
Teleportation was advanced magic, the witches and warlocks of the Church of Night told him later. Far too advanced for a boy who hadn’t even signed the Book. It should have killed Nick. They were impressed that it hadn’t.
Nick teleported to the foot of the mountains in the wild woods of Greendale. Through the trees, the Academy of Unseen Arts stood with its dark doors open wide.
The witches welcomed him. He’d been so alone, but now he was surrounded by people like him. They showed Nick the Academy, soothing scarlet light safe behind stone walls, and brought him to a huge room with wonder on all sides. After years of words lost to the wind, Nick found again—at last—his mother’s books.
Nick wasn’t like Sabrina, unwilling to trade her soul away. He signed his name in the Book of the Beast with total readiness. It made sense to Nick that a book would offer him refuge.
Nick spent several days in the library, where he discovered the works of Edward Spellman. Then he emerged to explore his new home. The first students Nick met wanted to attack him, which went badly for them. Next was a guy with blond hair who wanted something else.
“Hello,” he said. “I’m Luke Chalfant. And you are gorgeous.”
Nick smirked. “Yes, I know.”
“I’m on my way to a club run by Father Blackwood. No girls allowed. Good for witches to be locked out of a few things, am I right?”
You’re trash , Nick thought, looking anywhere but at Luke. He chanced to see down a low stone passageway to a red velvet sofa and two girls. One was sleeping with her head in the other girl’s lap. The girl still awake was smoothing a hand over the sleeper’s coal-black hair, unaware anyone could see her. At the time, Nick didn’t know how rare it was, to catch Prudence in a moment of tenderness.
“Would you like to join our society?” asked Luke. “You’d fit right in.”
That was insulting, but no matter how much Nick disliked someone, he wanted everybody to approve of him.
“Maybe later,” Nick said with a charming smile, meaning Never, please die . He went toward the girls.
They noted his approach.
The girl with marvelous cheekbones and even more marvelous sweetness in her face, who Nick would find out later was Prudence, raised an eyebrow and said: “Sister?”
Dorcas came fluttering from a corner of the room to sit beside Prudence, red head tilted against Prudence’s shoulder.
There were three of them, Nick noted approvingly. Like a pack—no. Like a family. They would be safer in a group. And they could do magic. They would protect each other.
He leaned forward, reaching up to catch the stone lintel so he was framed in the doorway, and let them take a long look.
“Hello, ladies,” he murmured. “I’m Nick Scratch.”
After some time, Nick proved his prowess in all areas, and was officially their boyfriend.
Except being with the Weird Sisters wasn’t how Nick thought. Prudence never looked at him with that sweetness in her face. He slowly understood it wasn’t for him. There were occasions when the Weird Sisters said it was girls’ time and shut the door in his face.
There were the illusions they created too. Illusion was second nature to witches. It shouldn’t have reminded Nick of Amalia, pretending to be human with her wolfish teeth. But it did.
After Amalia, Nick’s world was his school and his spells, witches and books. Everybody said he was the guy who had it all.
Only in his latest and loneliest hours did he admit to himself that nothing felt real.
The Weird Sisters harassed the half mortal who lived nearby whenever they caught her alone. Nick had never seen her, but he paid attention when the Weird Sisters talked about Sabrina Spellman, his favorite author’s daughter. Nick was curious about Edward Spellman, the man who’d written those wonderful books and married a mortal wife.
Once, the Weird Sisters were discussing how much they dreaded Sabrina coming to the Academy. Father Blackwood and the coven had never permitted the half mortal to even attend unholy service at the Church of Night. She’d been raised away from other witches.
“She must be lonely,” Nick mused.
Prudence heard. “Her lonely? Her family fusses over her as if she’s the only girl in the world. She goes to a mortal school! She collects mortals. She’s got one of her very own. They walk around the woods holding hands as if she’s afraid she’ll lose him.”
Nick hesitated. “Is he trying to get away?”
Prudence scoffed. “She treats him like gold. She’s soft, if you ask me. Like Edward Spellman.”
“Oh,” said Nick.
At the next opportunity, he got eyes on Sabrina and her mortal. He grabbed a chance to talk to the mortal. Naturally Nick memory-charmed him after, but he learned what he wanted to know. The mortal was happy to stay with Sabrina. The mortal was in love.
Nick saw Sabrina from afar, and liked what he saw.
He went home and broke up with the Weird Sisters.
Cold in hell, Nick remembered seeing Sabrina in summertime. He turned away from the illusion of the Academy of Unseen Arts. He knew it wasn’t real. The doors of his school hadn’t looked like cage doors.
Nick had waited for All Hallow’s Eve, for Sabrina to come to the Academy. But Nick worried. Perhaps pretty Sabrina was too like a mortal. The harrowing at the Academy was brutal.